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Oz cast reunites

2 decades on, Edie Falco, Lee Tergesen & Dean Winters recall HBO's ground-breaking prison drama.

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Former cast members from the ground-breaking HBO prison series Oz reunited at the Paley Festival on the weekend.

In attendance were Lee Tergesen, Eamonn Walker, Dean Winters, Terry Kinney, Edie Falco and creator Tom Fontana.

The series ran for 6 seasons from 1997, screening in Australia on SBS.

Edie Falco said, “Oz was very important for me in that it gave me the ability to support myself.

“It marked the reality of not having to go back to my restaurant job. That was big.

Dean Winters, said, “I think we were so far ahead of the curve that the country didn’t know how to take it.

“We got a good reception, but for a show 20 years ago that had a Muslim as the lead, a gay love story, had a bad nun and all this crazy shit like the drugs and the violence, and then people talk about that today, and I’m like ‘We were doing that 20 years ago. Wake up!’.”

“When Oz started 20 years ago there were three networks and Fox and that was about it,” Lee Tergesen said of the show’s ability to cover subjects such as sexuality and race. “Nobody else was making these kind of shows, and it really pushed the envelope of television.”

The amazing Edie Falco on the #OzReunion red carpet ?#PaleyFest NY

A post shared by The Paley Center for Media (@paleycenter) on

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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  2. Definitely ground-breaking on so many fronts. Occasionally gob-smacking. Used to really look fwd to this late at night.

    Thought that the first 4 seasons were the strongest but watched all. There were a number of memorable characters but the standout for me was the complex and conflicted Beecher.

    When SBS first started showing it, I didn’t realise that it was already ten years old. Imagine the impact of this in 1997 when people were used to crime shows such as Law & Order.

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